July campaign finance reports, HISD and HCC

Ericka Mellon did me the favor of the heavy lifting for HISD Trustees.

Anna Eastman

Campaign finance reports filed this week show at least two non-incumbents are entering races for the Houston school board this November, while contributions for most trustees generally were smaller following new board-imposed restrictions.

Board president Anna Eastman, who represents District I, which includes the Heights, faces a challenge from Hugo Mojica, executive director of the Greater Northside Chamber of Commerce. Eastman raised more than any other trustee or candidate this reporting period, bringing in nearly $18,300 since January. Mojica, who formerly worked for the Project GRAD nonprofit that contracted with HISD, raised more than $2,100.

In south Houston’s District IX, now represented by Larry Marshall, a former HISD trustee, W. Clyde Lemon, has filed to run. Marshall, entangled in a bribery lawsuit, canceled his fundraiser in late June and raised no money this reporting period, which ran from January through July 15.

It’s unclear if Marshall, first elected in 1997, is seeking re-election. Marshall could not be reached immediately for comment Wednesday.

Lemon, an attorney who represented District IX in the mid-1990s before Marshall’s election, raised $2,550 this reporting period. He has $923 on hand. Marshall has more than $18,000 on hand from prior fundraising.

The other seats on the ballot this November are District V (Mike Lunceford), District VI (Greg Meyers) and District VII (Harvin Moore). No other candidates have filed to run. They have until Aug. 26 to file.

I couldn’t have put it any better than that. Go see the full post for Mellon’s summaries. If you want to see the reports themselves, you have to go to the HISD Trustees webpage, then click the link for the trustee in question, and from there you’ll see a link for their finance reports. The downside to this is that there’s no easy way to find reports for a challenger like Hugo Mojica. To be honest, I’m not even sure where these reports get filed, so I don’t know where to look for them other than on the Trustees’ own pages, which obviously isn’t enough. If it’s HISD that gets the reports, then my request to HISD is this: Please make it possible to find all candidates’ reports online. If Larry Marshall doesn’t run again, there’s likely to be a multitude of candidates. We deserve to know what their funding sources are.

As for HCC, their campaign finance reports page does list one challenger, Kevin Hoffman, and since they have all the reports available via that page they can easily add others as needed or appropriate. However, as of this writing they don’t have the July reports available yet, just the January ones. I’ll check back again later and let you know when those are up.